Awakening the Bible
DAVID HENSOLD
Nothing puts me to sleep quite like the Bible.
In truth, I’ve never had a tough time sleeping. When I was a kid, as the hour would approach anything near bedtime, I was known to fall asleep anywhere and on anything. Many times at restaurants, once in a bowl of spaghetti, apparently even a few occasions of sleepwalking toward the stairs only to be stopped by a vigilant parent (Thanks, Mom!). Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy reading and listening to other people’s perspectives on biblical passages, but opening it up myself and trying to form the words into sentences has never really held my attention. I attribute some of this mental block to the complicated history I have had with the Bible.
I grew up going to a non-denominational charismatic church while also attending a conservative Baptist school. Bible was big in my childhood. I regularly heard how important it was and how I should read my Bible and pray every day so I could grow, grow, <snore>. But, not only did I have to read it every day, I also had to have the singularly correct understanding of what it said. I found that this pressure really affected my relationship with the holy book and turned off any desire I had to pursue it.
Bible “studies” were the worst. They were never so much study sessions as they were receiving lectures on the Bible or answering loaded questions meant to lead the group to a particular destination. I figured why not save myself some time and grief and skip straight to reading the authors who already had all the answers, right? Nevertheless, there was a time when I tried to force myself to read it anyway. I did my very best to figure out what those right answers were so that when the next Bible study happened, I could have the most impressive and intelligent thing to say.
Like many parts of my faith, this got shaken up a bit when I encountered Imago Dei during college. I recall one incident in particular in which an Imago Dei small group was discussing a Genesis passage. I don’t exactly remember which passage; probably the creation story or the flood, perhaps. In response to some questioning about whether this passage should be taken literally, I clearly remember saying to a prominent and still-active member of this very congregation, “If you aren’t going to believe all of what the Bible says, how can you believe any of it?” (I’m so sorry, Vicky!) About ten years later, I now believe the creation narrative is an allegorical poem, and a whole-Earth flood never took place. Go figure.
I originally thought that questioning what the Bible said was to dismiss it as irrelevant or to not give credence to its authority, but as I continued asking questions and listening to other people’s stories, I discovered a group of people that actually took the Bible seriously enough not to just take it at face value. Instead, they wrestled with it and dug deep into the questions and tried to figure out what this ancient book, written for different people in a different time, had to say to them today. As Peter Enns says in his book How the Bible Actually Works, “Within the Bible itself we see writers both respecting the past and transposing it into the present. Or better, they respect the past by transposing it, thus allowing the past to continue speaking.”
My change in mindset didn’t happen overnight. I even had to disengage for a while to get a different perspective on the place the Bible held in my faith. But looking back, what really woke me up to the Bible was having a space to authentically question and doubt and wrestle without others looking down on me for doing so. Enns again says it well: “I may be wrong in how I process what God is like, but I am not wrong because I process what God is like.”
David Hensold spends most of his days playing in the dirt as an Engineer at Caterpillar. He likes ethnic food and yummy coffees, mostly when enjoyed in the company of his wife, Elizabeth, and son, Ezra.